France, when in difficulties, appealed
to the sentiment of the nations and found arms everywhere to help her.
What then is able organization worth to-day?
The fluctuations of fortune in Europe show for all her peoples a
succession of victories and defeats. There are no peoples always
victorious. After having, under Napoleon I, humiliated Germany, France
saw the end of her imperialistic dream, and later witnessed the ruin
of Napoleon III. She has suffered two great defeats, and then, when
she stood diminished in stature before a Germany at the top of her
fortune, she, together with the Allies, has had a victory over an
enemy who seemed invincible.
But no one can foresee the future. To have conveyed great nuclei of
German populations to the Slav States, and especially to Poland; to
have divided the Magyars, without any consideration for their fine
race, among the Rumanians, Czeko-Slovaks and the Jugo-Slavs; to have
used every kind of violence with the Bulgars; to have offended Turkey
on any and every pretext; to have done this is not to have guaranteed
the victory and the peace.
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